Soft Skills & Essential Understandings for a Life and Career as a Modern Dancer
By Jill Randall
I always love a list - for reflection, for inspiration, or for finding resources.
To that end, I have been sketching out this list of 33 ideas over the past year based on mentoring younger dancers in the field. I hope that you might find this list useful in your personal life or teaching life.
A bit about me: for the past 27 years, I have had the honor, privilege, and challenge of living a life as a dancer, a modern dancer specifically. I have worn multiple hats over the years, oftentimes several at once including performer, teaching artist, arts administrator, writer, mentor, and occasional choreographer. Let us also not forget the role as a student. Always a student.
Inspired by Tony Wagner’s list of seven 21st century skills for the workplace and also the eight Studio Habits of Mind from Harvard’s Project Zero, the aim of this article is to offer an articulated list to help young professional dancers, and also to help dancers of all ages over the years. It is about lifelong learning and growth mindset for us all, no matter where we land on the career path today. I hope this list can be a reference, a discussion starter, and a springboard. These essential understandings have guided me over the years and continue to support and challenge me each week.
If you are teaching in a bachelor's degree program in dance, my wish would be that each of these points is discussed in some way before completion of your program.
The current list as of December 2024 includes 33 ideas. Some are pretty direct, while others need a little explanation here. Thank you for diving in and exploring them with me. The list might feel long, but it is reflective of the complexity of a career in dance and the many roles we take on at any given moment.
Thank you to colleagues Lily Gee and Mackenzie Nye for sharing feedback on the first draft of the article.
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1. Short-term and long-term goals, dreams, and aspirations
At this moment, can you share what you hope for the next year? Five years from now? Ten years from now?
2. Intrinsic motivation and drive
Where is your passion and curiosity? What motivates you?
3. Embrace your strengths; notice your challenges.
What are your habits?
4. Growth mindset
Flex this muscle, as the journey is long. There are so many ways to grow, change, strengthen, reflect, and improve. (Read Carol Dweck’s work if the concept of growth mindset is new to you.)
5. Repetition
Understand the purpose of repetition in our dance life. (Repeating steps, rehearsing, taking classes week after week and year after year…)
6. The trio of: lifelong learning, growth mindset, and longview
The field of dance is a lifelong endeavor full of potential to grow, deepen, change, streamline, reconsider, re-imagine, discover, and expand.
7. Note the synergy and fluidity with all of the roles we can hold in the dance field.
Make connections. Embrace the multidimensionality of dance, including:
-Being in class, being a student
-Performing
-Choreographing
-Teaching
-Technical theater work (stage managing, lighting design, house managing, production managing)
-Writing
-Arts administration
8. Deep understanding that teaching is integral to a career in dance
Teaching, whether full-time or part-time, will be an important aspect of your career. Build your skills, observe others, be curious, substitute teach, find a mentor. Teaching is a noble pursuit and the lifeline to keep our field going. Classes are still core to our work, and even in rehearsals we are teaching and learning. Discover what you love about teaching, how it connects and serves the community, and how the classroom is a lab for your own creativity, imagination, and artistry. Consider being a teaching artist.
9. You can be multi-passionate!
10. Non-dance life and hobbies
Staying happy and healthy includes non-dance friends and non-dance activities and curiosities (cooking, reading, running, gaming, guitar playing, photography, etc).
11. The relationship of endurance, exhaustion, rest, and recuperation
Managing the hustle, multiple jobs, and freelance life.
Evaluating what your self-care actions include. Thinking about injury prevention too.
12. Health+wellness
What does it mean to be healthy? How do you define “wellness?”
13. Rest
Please follow Tricia Hersey and the Nap Ministry. Read her book Rest is Resistance: A Manifesto. Rest. R e s t.
14. Mentors
Finding a mentor; being a mentor. Dialogue/care/support/sounding boards. Giving and receiving. Asking and offering.
15. Build your resource network.
-Body care/body workers
-Mental health options
-Free and sliding scale clinics in your community
-Mentors
-Former teachers you can contact
16. Reflection
Not simply relying on external feedback, praise, validation, and dance reviews. Building your own valuable, nourishing practice for reflection.
17. Written clarity - offer it, ask for it.
Have the bases covered for jobs and gigs. Ask for a handbook, letter of agreement, memorandum of understanding, or staff manual. Don’t rely on just something said aloud or in a text message.
18. Articulating what “collaboration” is and is not
Define it for yourself. How is collaboration similar/different from “teamwork” and being in the “corps?” How are artistic ideas and offerings shared, used, and credited?
19. Holistic respect of your elders, peers, and younger colleagues
We are talking about teachers, choreographers, fellow students, tech crew, etc. See others in the room. Be in community; learn from others. Kindness, respect. See and be seen.
20. Active and deep listening & non-defensiveness
With your teacher, your students, your choreographer
21. Developing a lifelong commitment/practice for racial equity + justice
This is one of the biggest ones on this list - a lifelong commitment to equity, liberation, and voice, whether for you or for the community. Reading, discussing, reflecting, and challenging privilege, access, bias, and white supremacy and the many ways it shows up on stage, in the classroom, with hiring practices, and much more. Building a culturally affirming teaching practice and an understanding of critical dance pedagogy.
22. Being a part of a culture of consent
Setting intentions, boundaries, and procedures, whether this is in a teaching setting or choreographic process. Discussing touch, intimacy direction, and the ability to say “no” or “not now.”
23. Understanding and finding access to repair & healing practices
Art and artmaking involves risks on every level, and sometimes feelings are hurt, microaggressions take place, and boundaries are crossed with touch and consent. Learn what systems and resources are available at your school, workplace, or community (mediation, restorative justice practices, filing a grievance, harm reports, etc). We need to build a new culture in the dance field around this please.
24. Accessibility and access needs
What are your access needs? Your students? Your colleagues? Creating a community where accessibility is at the forefront for collaborators, the whole artistic and production team, students, and audience members alike. (The new Access Guide from AXIS Dance Company provides so many resources and reflection questions.)
25. Commitment and follow-through
26. Resilience
A lifelong practice to manage, accept, and embrace injuries, corrections and suggestions in classes and rehearsals, reviews of your shows, and not getting every gig you audition for.
27. Self check-ins a few times a year about:
-Curiosity
-Compassion
-Self-compassion
-Respect
-Empathy
-Humor
-Trustworthiness
-Reliability
-Kindness
-Courage
-Resilience
-Humility
-Collaboration
-Teamwork
28. Creativity
Define it for yourself. What is creative intelligence?
29. Imagination
Define it for yourself. What is imaginative thinking? Imaginative teaching?
30. The evergreen question: Why do I dance?
31. Love
Love of the form, this career path, your body.
32. Satisfaction/fulfillment
33. Remembering joy
My sincere wish is that this list of 33 ideas will bolster dancers over the years within their careers and following their dreams. Please feel free to reach out with ideas, questions, and feedback ([email protected]).
Jill Randall is a dancer based in the San Francisco Bay Area. She is the Director of Artistic Programming and Staff Support of Shawl-Anderson Dance Center. She performed for 18 years in the Bay Area before “retiring” from performing at age 40. Jill founded the site Life as a Modern Dancer, now into its 13th year with over 1500 posts. Jill completed her BFA in Modern Dance at the University of Utah in 1997 and her MFA in Dance: Creative Practice at Saint Mary’s College in 2016 and currently is an adjunct assistant professor in the MFA and LEAP Programs at Saint Mary’s College. Find out more at jillrandalldance.com.
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Related articles on Life as a Modern Dancer:
From Emily Hansel:
Relearning Agency: A Dancer’s Call for Collective Action
Cultivating Healthy, Equitable Workplaces for Dancers
Empowering Dancers through Contracts
Contingency plans that support dancers’ mental and physical health
From Jill Randall:
Conflict Resolution Within the Context of Dance: Resource Guide (updated December 2024)
Related books and audio:
Dance Pedagogy for a Diverse World: Culturally Relevant Teaching in Theory, Research and Practice by Nyama McCarthy-Brown
Access Guide to Presenting and Touring the Performing Arts by AXIS Dance Company
Rest is Resistance: A Manifesto by Tricia Hersey (available as a book or audiobook)
Mindset - Updated Edition: Changing The Way You think To Fulfil Your Potential by Dr. Carol Dweck
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